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Sunday, 4 November 2018

DAPHNE'S FUN AFTERNOON MAKING CHRISTMAS DECORATIONS

Good Afternoon to you,

Firstly, I am so sorry I was not with you yesterday afternoon, but I had a lovely surprise visit from my sister-in-law.... and once we started chatting the time flew by, which left me no time to write to you. I did let my Instagram friends know that I would not be posting yesterday, but I did not have the time to post here on my blog.

.... but I will make up for it, as I have a lovely little story to tell you today.

Last week, as usual, I joined the ladies of my Thursday craft group. When I arrived, I said hello to everyone and made my way to my craft table.

I made myself a cup of coffee and then started to unpack the contents of my bag, which I organised on my table.At the moment I am busy, making Christmas tree decorations, so this was the perfect project to work on at my Thursday group.

Whilst I was doing this, my friend arrived with her little 4 year old granddaughter. I will call the little girl Georgina... this is not her real name, but for the sake of privacy that is what I will call her.

We welcomed them both, but when I said hello to Georgina, she was not sure about me, she was very shy. I did understand as she had not met me before, so I went back to my table and I thought to myself, she will speak to me when she is ready.

Shortly afterwards another member of our group arrived, who is also a Grandmother, and she brought her little 6 year old granddaughter.... this little girl I will call Molly. So as you can see, we were thoroughly spoilt with 2 lovely little girls to make a fuss of.

After everyone caught up with each others news, my friends started crafting and I started sewing,

I was busily sewing the bell onto this green Christmas tree decoration, when, from now where, Georgina appeared and sat on my lap. Being 4 years of age, she is quite a little girl, and I realised she had snuck under my table to find her way onto my lap. Honestly, I was so focused on what I was doing, that I did not see this lovely little girl beside me. I know I tend to get lost in my work, but I would have thought I would have seen Georgina making her way to me.

I have to say I was secretly pleased, because Georgina seemed to lose her shyness and started talking to me. Whilst talking to me she saw on the table, my box filled with interesting objects and she wanted to see what was inside.

So I removed the hexagons from the box and I lay them on the table.... her eyes lit up and she started playing with them. She lay them out on the table and for a little while she was satisfied.... remember this is a little 4 year old.

.... and then something else caught her eye,

inside a smaller box which I use to keep odds and ends for projects I am working on. Inside the box Georgina discovered,

a glue stick.... which caused great excitement as she knew what it was. She picked it up and before I knew it, she had twisted the lid off and wanted to glue something.

At this point, Molly became interested in what Georgina was doing and came across to my table. So I had to think quickly, what could I give the 2 little girls to glue. I didn't have any craft paper only material.

.... of course, they could glue the hexagons.... but I had to explain, that we would glue the paper on the back of the hexagons and not the material on the front.

I asked each girl to choose 2 hexagons which they liked and then they began using the glue stick, the hexagons were glued together, and of course glued, then glued a little bit more. They decided this was fun and chose some more hexagons to glue, but at the rate the girls were gluing, first I would run out of hexagons and secondly I would run out of glue. So I had to think on my feet, what else could they do.... I know, they could glue a piece of ribbon to the top of the hexagon.... can you see where I am going with this. When you are playing with a 4 year old and a 6 year old your brain has to work pretty quickly. So we cut the ribbon and both girls glued the ribbon to each of their hexagons.

....but for one little girl, the glue stick was too much fun and she was not going to give it up lightly.... can you guess who it was. That's right, little Georgina was having so much fun, she decided that it would be much more fun to glue 3 hexagons together, not paper to paper, but material to material. I think if she could, she would have glued every hexagon together, one on top of the other, until every hexagon was glued.

So again, I had to think quickly. Inside my smaller box I had quite a few little bells, so I needed to distract Georgina... I took all the bells out of the box and put one bell to Georgina's ear and let her hear the bell tinkle.... her eyes lit up.... this was fun.

I asked Georgina and Molly to choose the bell they liked the most, but to be able to choose, they needed to put the bell to their ear and listen to the tinkle of each bell. This they were quite happy to do, and it took quite a while for each to decide which bell they liked the best.

.... although when it was decision time, Georgina felt it would be much better to have 10 bells rather than 1... I mean why have 1 when you can have 10, but if I gave Georgina 10 bells, which she was most welcome to, I would not have had enough bells for Molly. So what was I to do.

I decided to turn the hexagons into Christmas tree decorations for the girls. So I persuaded the girls, that in order for me to finish the decorations for them to take home, I needed to begin sewing. Luckily both grandmothers could see what I was trying to do, and sat their respective granddaughter on their knee, so that I could begin sewing.

I hurriedly slip stitched around the hexagons and I was able to centralise the ribbon as the glue had not dried. I then took each bell which Georgina and Molly had chosen and stitched it to the bottom of each of their hexagons.

I have never stitched so quickly.... but I finished both Christmas tree decorations in time for the girls to take home. Although this decoration isn't what the girls made, I wanted to give you an idea of what we had made together.

Both Georgina and Molly loved their Christmas tree decoration and they each thanked me, then just as Georgina was leaving, hand in hand with her grandmother, she looked at me and with a smile said , 'This Christmas tree decoration belongs to me, so could you make me another one for my mummy.'

I smiled and said of course I would.

.... and with that she was gone.

It has been a while since I have been around such young girls, but do you know it was a joy, I loved every minute of it.

.... so there was nothing left for me to do, but to return,

to my sewing, which did not feel quite the same as it had before I met Georgina and Molly.